Wireless Heart Pressure Monitor Promises Revolution In Coronary Care

There was an interesting story reported on ABC WorldNews last night concerning a wireless heart pressure monitor that is in clinical trials and is causing a stir in the medical community.

The heart pressure monitor, which is described as being about the size of a paper clip, is implanted into a patient's pulmonary artery in a procedure that takes about seven minutes. Once in place, a patient passes a wand over their chest which then powers the implant which in turn transmits the patient's heart mean pressure, systolic pressure, diastolic pressure, heart rate and cardiac output to a receiver that sends the information to a secure web site. The patient's doctor then can review the information at his or her computer or on a hand held device.

The reason why this is such a big deal is that the clinical trial is reporting that patients with the device experienced a 38% reduction in hospitalizations in the first year, which ABC News says is a "huge number in the medical world."

(If someone can tell me what is an "average number" for these types of clinical trials for comparison, I would appreciate it.)

Another reason is that the monitor provides a level of information about a patient's heart that is radically improved over what is generally available to doctors today. The ABC News story says that doctors have typically depended on increases in a patient's weight as reported by daily weigh-ins to give them indications that something might be amiss with the patient's heart.

Dr. William Abraham, a principal researcher in the study was quoted in the story saying that, "We now know that daily weight change is very insensitive to predicting episodes of worsening heart failure."